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Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoEamon Queeney | DispatchAdrian Casas, of Tru Service Group, a labor and setup company, hammers up a wall mural as he and his co-workers build the MRI Performance and Natrol brand booth for the Arnold Fitness EXPO in the main hall of the Greater Columbus Convention Center.

Way in the back of the big hall at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, hidden by 700 chairs
still stacked in columns and by 132 rolls of carpet that will eventually line the aisles, Rob
Martin mops the main stage.

Then he sweeps it. And then he mops it again. And sweeps it. And ... Well, you get it.

As director of events for Live Technologies – which produces the staging, lights and sound
for the Arnold Sports Festival events – Martin worked almost unnoticed this morning as the rest of
the Convention Center buzzed around him.

Tomorrow, the giant space that is Halls D and C at the Convention Center will come alive with
840 booths where vendors hawk their stuff to the conservatively-estimated 35,000 visitors who will
pass through the Arnold Fitness Expo each day through Sunday.

Tomorrow, it will be a sea of bodies that smells like perfume, coconut tanning oil,
testosterone and sweat.

Today, though, the air is pungent with spray paint, Armor All, and bleach as go-time
approaches.

Most of the vendors started setting up their booths yesterday morning. Many will work well
through the night tonight.

Somehow, it will all be ready when the Expo doors open at 9:30 tomorrow morning, said Brent
LaLonde, spokesman for the Arnold events. “It really is kind of amazing to watch the space
transform,” he said.

The Expo added about 100 booths this year, which meant that martial-arts and other
competitions that happen in Hall C lost some mat space. But the demand from vendors is so great for
the event, already the largest such expo in the country, that organizers probably could have sold
100 more, LaLonde said.

Pat Lanzillo, who sells custom-designed workout gear with his wife at their hardcoregear.com
booth, has been coming from Fort Lauderdale to the Arnold for 20 years.

Today, his mannequins are still naked and piles of yoga pants remain folded in plastic tubs.

“It will all get done,” Lanzillo said with a confident shrug. And an hour after the Expo
closes at 4 p.m. Sunday? “It looks like a bomb went off again,” Lanzillo said. “Everybody splits.”

But that’s then. Today, it is still kind of a war zone. Men with power tools kneel and –
gasp! – read printed directions as they build complicated displays. Others assemble cages inside
which people will try to deadlift their own body weight.

Women use box-cutters to quickly slice open thousands of boxes of protein bars and
weight-loss powder.

And everyone keeps an eye on where they are walking. No space is safe.

So many forklifts deliver pallets of vitamin-infused water and kettle bells and sports bras
that their beeping horns make the whole place sound like a big-city intersection at rush hour. Men
climb 30-foot ladders to hang special lights and others lean out of cherry-pickers to hang banners
from the ceiling.